Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
So I would rather focus my efforts on improving my French as much as I can. I have thought about posting a little in the French forums here (I wold love to do some ebook reading in French) but have been shy. I know my writing is not as good as my speaking is, and I don't want the actual French people to feel like I am interrupting their 'real' conversations with my 'learning French' issues.
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Hey! Think of all of us writing in the English forums and fearing to use the wrong word or to make a spelling mistake that can completely change the meaning of what we write! (Each post - despite what everyone might think - takes me forever to write because I re-read 5 times, then spell check, then re-read, post and edit almost every time (suddenly remembering a conversation between Kaz and DGMa about paranoia))
Come to the French forum pleeeeeeaaaasssseeeee! I'm just getting familiarized with it, we could navigate through it together!
Personally, I'm a Francophone that started to learn English in school at the age of eight - English classes in Québec are mandatory until university. Most people I know who took exactly the same classes as me don't speak or write English, since the classes focused on grammar, and I think I succeeded a little better thanks to an unhealthy curiosity - my parents listen to tv in English, and they spoke English when they didn't want me to understand something when I was a kid, it drove me crazy, so I worked to change that state of things.
Then I went to college and took Spanish and German classes. Spanish I still can speak enough to get me through some conversations, but German just left me a year after I stopped the classes, since I never got the chance to practice (and that is going to change thanks to MR and Ravenne!!!
)
When I studied sociology in university, I took an Arabic class for fun with The Ex, who has Lebanese origins, but in a whole semester, we only got to learn the alphabet, calligraphy, numbers and about 20 basic sentences. He forgot everything in about 2 months and it took me about 4 to be alphabetically clueless, but I remember phonetically 2-3 sentences.
While we're on the issue of language learning: I read that speaking and reading more than one language keeps the brain healthier and diminishes impact of Alzheimer, or at least pushes it back a few years. Start learning!